Evaluating Rookie Hitters

In this weekend’s chat, I was asked the following question, shared below with my response:

7:37 Beano: So many call ups this week! Can you help with a bid pecking order? Alcantara, Torrens, Garcia, Valdez, Ramirez, Troy …
7:38 Jeff Zimmerman: I’m not really high on any of them. I’m sure one will be useful, but they seem like fill-ins.

I looked through the players and wasn’t interested for various reasons. But valuing recently promoted hitters is a challenge for everyone, so today I want to expand on that short answer by sharing a bit of my process. In addition to the five players above, I included two other recent call-ups: Sterlin Thompson and Colt Emerson. This year’s edition of The Process includes my work on this topic.

With prospects, we have three sources of information to look at to make a call on whether we want to pick up a player: the evaluation (ranking/scouting report), projections driven by overall minor league production, and current stats (comps and MLE-minor league equivalents). Here are the stats I look at.

1. Steamer600 (ROS) OPS and SB. OPS is the best real-world stat equivalent to fantasy production. You could look at something like wOBA or wRC+, but those stats account for league and park factors. Fantasy leagues don’t care if OPS is inflated by a hitter’s park.

2. Prospect Ranks. I respect all the hard work prospect evaluators put in to figure out who the best overall and organizational prospects are. In The Process, I found the following projection for various ranked hitters.

In general, I find that there are three tiers for ranked prospects:

• Overall Top-20
• Overall 21st to 100th, Team 1st to 8th
• Everyone else.

3. MLE (minor league equivalent). Again in The Process, I looked at some rough numbers for how a hitter’s MLB performance is likely to compare to their Triple-A performance.

In the data I share today, I’ll use the exact .211 mean drop in OPS (so we can expect a player’s MLB OPS to be about .211 points lower than his Triple-A OPS). But when I am quickly evaluating a player, a simple .200 OPS drop goes a long way towards telling me if I’m interested. An .850 OPS in Triple-A is usually needed to be fantasy relevant in the majors.

4. Triple-A Skills. For this variable, I account for four factors for players in AAA: age, plate appearances, Contact%, and iEV (improved exit velocity, iEV = .67*avgEV+.33*maxEV). I’ve found that the two factors for hitters failing in the majors are not hitting the ball hard and/or not making contact.

For example, here are the comps for Jhostynxon Garcia.

There are a lot of disappointing hitters on that list and a couple of breakouts. This simple list gives me an idea of the historical range of outcomes.

None of the guys featured stood out with their comps. Kevin Alcántara came out on top (least worst), and here are his comps.

5. Create an overall value. It’s helpful to give a player an overall value that can be easily compared to other players; something you can quickly understand and evaluate. I chose ADP (Average Draft Position). During the six offseason months, ADP is mentioned for every player, and fantasy managers have an idea where a certain talent would get drafted. Besides OPS, stolen bases need to be included in roto leagues. Here is the formula I use to convert OPS and Steals into an ADP, also from The Process.

ADP: 8.66*OPS^(-10.5)-8.1*SB+8.7
R-squared: .566

And here is a simple table of ADP at various OPS and stolen base levels.

With no steals, a batter needs to be projected for ~.700 OPS or higher in most leagues. But getting to double-digit steals helps a ton.

6. Playing Time. The final factor is playing time, and it might be more important than all the previous evaluations. Bryce Eldridge may had the best projected results but if he’s only going to play every other day, he’s worthless in most leagues.

Of the guys examined, I felt like Colt Emerson was the only one with guaranteed playing time as long as he wasn’t a complete zero.

With the background information, here are the values for the hitters. I found the average and best (upside) OPS values. Finally, I found the corresponding ADP value to their OPS and Steals.

My thoughts on the output.

• None of the average values make the cut for a bench player in a 15-team, 30-player league. Well, Thompson barely does, but only because he gets a boost from playing in Colorado.
• None of the players meet the combination of being a highly touted prospect and performing. Emerson and Ramirez have high rankings, but weren’t dominating AAA. Torres (.390 BABIP) and Thompson (.418 BABIP) were hitting in AAA, but are on the older side and seem like organization filler.
• In this instance, I think I have to go with Emerson; he’s playing, and his prospect ranking points to some upside.
• My next pick would be Thompson. It comes down to playing time with Thompson starting four straight games and having the potential for 20 HR and 10 HR on a season. Think Brandon Marsh.
• From the original list, I could see using Torres (Jake McCarthy clone) for some speed and a decent batting average, but little power.

Getting back to the original question, I wasn’t interested in the original six players mentioned. And now you know why.